Ghosts in the Machine

A philosophical consideration of resilience in the first weeks of Türkiye's twin earthquakes, February 2023.

My photographic practice is inclined towards the things we hold in common: our susceptibility for wonder; an innate curiosity of the planet and all things in it; a desire for immortality even if we are not fooled by our finite contingency of presence in this world.

So, when twin earthquakes decimated Turkey’s southern and central regions (and northern and western Syria) in February 2023, I did not wish to bear witness to this suffering, too keenly aware of the hand of man in abetting the earth’s upheaval. I felt I could not add to those vivid and suffocating media images of desperate acts of rescue and courage interspersed with dwindling moments of hope. Within minutes, buildings had crumbled, too many disintegrating like puff pastry, dissolving and fusing with its innards, no longer able to secure or protect what was inside. Those who lived wailed, ‘but how will I live?’, an anxious, probing question, and one that raises structural and pragmatic concerns. What is the worth of our frenzied, life-long activities when so much of what is rooted, certain and significant can be taken in moments, when the manner of our death is down to negligence, disorder or indifference.

I could not turn my mind to other things, and with my son, made my way to those ruins and to those traces of violence, confronting this dread so as to cleanse it of its strangeness. I wish to convey if but a few of the impressions called forth by the maws of buildings that opened into the intimate spaces of those that until recently had been like us, striving, embryonic. Orphaned belongings and familiar things, palpable traces of lives lived testify to our oneness. We crave and pursue fundamental things: warmth, nourishment, safety, fulfilment and opportunity – to be seen and held. May these images spark those sensitivities and help us create safe spaces and communities in which to thrive.

I saw much of what was lost, but also what small feats of recovery and mindful acts of industry must propel us forward to face the overwhelming evidence of our metaphysical contingency, our time together brief and precious, but an irrelevance in relation to the age of the Earth.